November Nervousness and Nonchalance

What a day it has been! Eid celebrations, and two exams; rushing back from the mosque in the morning, taking the bus to the Mile End campus where I was due to take my Funmed exams, before realising they started half an hour later than I thought they had.  There was enough time to take out my notes and frantically memorise a few more names of drugs we may have needed to know (and yes, I am a supporter of last-minute revision!).  The night before, all I dreamt about was of all the Medicine I'd learnt over the 9 weeks, and this whole month (with me turning 21 in between) has been filled with on and off revision. To be honest, apart from all the extra lectures I've been attending since the beginning of the year, I don't think there has been a solid few days of just revision. If you plotted a graph of my revision activity against time (rediscovering the geek inside of me), it would look alot like a camel, with hemorrhoids.  You could say that in the run-up to exams I've done the least revision, as the day before I had MedSoc, and the day before that I was writing reflective pieces of writing for it.  But anyway, the 2 and a quarter hour exam was alright, apart from it being held in the noisiest exam hall EVER. Someone's table kept squeaking as they wrote, and the district and hammmersmith and city undergound lines were running underneath the hall (yes, really!), so everytime a train passed, everything would rumble. But the most annoying thing was the invigilator's shoes... tap tap tap clock clock clock. She knew she'd be striding along the rows of nervous exam-takers that morning but still insisted on wearing her tap-dancing shoes.

The second exam was computer-based, and as I always have the fortune of being in the group that goes first for everything, we took the exam at around 2pm whilst the rest took it at 3 (them having another hour to revise anatomy and the oft-confusing microanatomy).  We all sat down at the computers, knowing that we had 45 minutes to answer 45 questions; and from my calculations that makes it a question a minute. So we were 15 minutes through identifying bones and tissue and nerves and blood vessels, until the invigilator (yes, the tap-dancer again) said that we actually had 30 minutes to do the exam, and so she reduced the end time on the board by 15 minutes. Great. I almost had enough time to finish, but for the timer in the top right corner of the screen showing the actual time rather than the minutes elapsed like it usually does.  I guessed the last few and then finally, freedom! It didn't feel that great to be honest, but we bumped into our eccentric 'head of Funmed' lecturer and thanked him for his entertaining lectures.  Then I and a few friends sat in the campus Costa with my green tea and carrot cake (and chocolate cake, because I didn't want to pay the 25p charge for an under £5 card transaction), and just chilled. And where I discovered that I got clinical hypnosis and then brain structure and function for my module choices, which is quite good, although not my top (most competitive) choices of reconstructive surgery and dissection. But I'm still happy :)  Oh, and on the tube home whilst I was finally completing my delayed learning objectives for MedSoc, I turned to the pregnancy page, and just as I did so a pregnant lady boarded my carriage! So in exchange for my seat, I got to ask a few questions and fill in my page without having to do any research. Sorted.

So, I'm in need of a solid weekend of sleep before our next module which starts straight away on Monday, and more intense than the first, Human Development. I just hope in the meantime I can develop myself a good work pattern and not leave things til the last minute! Yawn. Bye bye November!